On their wedding day, Kristin and Anthony Mangine revisited the classroom where they met as pupils at the Barkalow Middle School, Freehold Township. Several members of the wedding party were classmates of the couple at the school. aCLB PHOTOGRAPHY FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — While most brides and grooms choose sunsets and mountains for the backdrops of their wedding photos, others go in a completely different direction.
Kristin Gerard of Howell and Anthony Mangine of Freehold will look back on their wedding pictures and memories of the Barkalow Middle School in Freehold Township will come to mind.
The newly married couple met at the middle school in seventh grade in the late 1990s when Mangine sat behind Gerard in a social studies class. They returned to the school for their wedding photographs.
“We became good friends and stayed good friends throughout middle school and high school,” Gerard said.
Both went on to graduate from Freehold Township High School. The two were separated during their college years when Gerard attended the Fashion Institute in New York and Mangine attended Towson University in Maryland.
A chance encounter during the summer of 2008 brought the friends back together.
“We reconnected after college when we ran into each other at Bar Anticipation” in Lake Como, Gerard said.
After “talking for the whole night,” Gerard, 30, and Mangine, 31, started dating.
The friends from middle school were married at St. Robert Bellarmine Church, Freehold Township, on Sept. 25. Following the wedding, the bride and groom, along with the bridal party (six of whom also attended Barkalow), posed for photos at their old school.
“The best man, maid of honor, three ushers and one bridesmaid all went to Barkalow,” Gerard said.
She said the school is a “special place with good memories.”
“It is always exciting to see two students who grew up together and went to the same school get married, and even better when members of the wedding party grew up with them,” said John Soviero, the principal at Barkalow Middle School who was vice principal when Gerard and Mangine were students there.
Gerard is employed as a merchandising manager with Fownes Brothers & Co. Inc., New York City, and Mangine is employed as a document systems specialist with Neopost USA, New York City.